Oh who woulda guessed it, I never died!
I've been doing things that have left me too busy to do a serious post and there's been too many bits and pieces popping up to let me do another tiny thing. Writing for extended periods of time is fun anyway! These events will be reported on out of order, as that's the kind of guy I am. Messin' all up with your perception of time, yo.
Maddie had never been to Ikea and I was itchin' to go somewhere, so I said we should go to Ikea one day, but she turned me down as it was about six pm and the only Ikea was almost two states away. The next day, we got up and jumped in her car and drove on several interstates, almost past the top of Virginia, to Ikea! What happened in Ikea doesn't really need reporting on, they're all the same. They all even keep the same layout inside, basically. The journey did take almost five hours though, and that's where all the fun in this country comes from in my opinion.
To start with, on the way we decided to get some burgers. I've already mentioned how America does big burgers, but I just have to repeat myself. Dang. We stopped at a burger place where the smallest thing on the menu was 1/3 of a pound. I got a 1/2 pound bacon cheeseburger because I hate my arteries, but even with that deep-seated disgust, I couldn't bring myself to order a 2/3 pound triple cheeseburger. I felt fatter just looking at the menu.
We got there and spent a good 3 hours wandering around, as one does, then left at about 9pm, intending to get back to Raleigh at about midnight/one AM. America has funny ways of designating highways though, what with one road being I-144, US-64 and H-44 all at once. Is that a bit of foreshadowing? I'm a terrible writer, so yes that's entirely foreshadowing and I'm warning you in advance!
We stopped at an ice-cream-focused diner called Friendly's in Richmond, Virginia for dinner, and split a combo meal which worked out great; combo meals cost $12 and you got to choose two mains and two sides, which meant for $12 we got a big steak, a big piece of grilled flounder, a lot of mashed potato and a lot of broccoli.
To pause for a little side-note: people in America are far, far more receptive to broccoli than in Australia. It's great, as it's basically my favourite vegetable. Returning to our scheduled programming...
After that came ice creams, and as you would expect from the fatty fast food candy nation, it was fantastic. Then came driving back, and who can blame me for thinking Exit 64, marked with a 64 sign on the side of the road, was different from I-64. Certainly not Maddie i'm very sorry still! We both sort of realised this around the time when it was 2am and we were driving through the mountains in West Virginia. We got home around 5am, it was in my opinion a really fun journey but for some reason that girl didn't like it. How odd!
The second time of going to the karaoke bar was a lot more relaxed; a girl remembered my hillbilly name (ah'm tom-bob y'all) and the guy remembered I'm Australian, but I never had to sing any more embarassing songs or anything like that, I just got to spend it how I normally would.
College is back in here, it started about August 20 for most people. This means I'm having a lot of time by myself to wander around Raleigh (or at least the college area, as I don't want to spend $110 to get utterly lost by cab, and when you're 22 the college area is basically the funnest area anyway) and generally get up to fun and games. There's a coffeeshop that I was warned was going to be full of arrogant people, but I've been going there regularly and the only time I found someone arrogant was two days ago, when a barrista stared at me like I was an idiot because I wanted a blended ice mocha which it turns out they call a "Joe Juice." I totally made him feel like an idiot in return though by explaining that somebody from another country not knowing their arbitrary and un-labelled name for a generally uniformly-named coffee beverage was hardly the height of ignorance he made it out to be, and he seemed to actually feel bad. On account of the blushing he did. I'm clearly the king of the coffeeshop in THIS state.
ANYWAY, I walked in another direction and had lunch at a rock-and-roll themed restaurant where I got served by a really nice, sweet, unbelievably stupid girl from Georgia. She had a ridiculously thick southern accent ("bread" had two syllables) and kept talking to me and asking how my meal was going and such, and bless her soul if she didn't ask me why I wasn't still in England even after telling her about a minute ago that I was in Australia. I couldn't help but laugh inwardly and tell her outwardly that England is having trouble with the French invasion, so for my own safety I decided to flee to the land of the free where nobody will attack you. She, and I feel kinda bad, didn't realise at all that I was joking around and mentioned how America is definitely a good refuge and how I shouldn't worry about those French here, oh dear.
People from up north seem to be a lot more short tempered and let one annoying thing ruin their entire day than people from the south here. Also, people from the north seem to think anybody with a southern drawl is a total idiot. People from down south are willing to let life just go on and to not get hung up on dumb stuff. I'm much preferring the south so far, despite the fact that all the "must see" things in America are up north. This may just be northeners in the south who have grumpy attitudes, who knows. My opinion will be more rounded soon!
As for other plans, in a few weeks I'll be in Ohio, I decided to not go to Philly because outside of a former skateboarding monument there's not too much that excites me, on October 19 I'll be in Michigan and last-minute bookings for trips to New York or Los Angeles are more expensive than booking a few months in advance, so I haven't decided exactly when I'm going to let $500 go to spend a week in the Big Apple but it'll probably be mid to late September.
I have to go. Not just to the toilet, but off to greater horizons. I'll try and find ways to update more! I promise!
Friday, August 31
Friday, August 17
Some quick photos!
Twizzlers are a licorice candy that you can use as a straw. They taste so great with diet pepsi cherry. I love candy. Oh man I love candy.
I have been fighting tigers (at natural science museums) and winning like crazy, as I am Australian and we are Inherently Super Awesome At All Things. Die, tiger. Die.
And here's the girl of greatness and myself at a metro line station in DC. I don't really have any other photos for the moment, plus hot dogs are ready and I wanna go drink some American beer and watch some movies. I will have more though fo sho, coming up later.
Thursday, August 16
Toilets are shaped weirdly
As I've yet to start massive travels and am still just enjoying all the smaller differences about American life, I guess I'll hafta talk about that for a bit!
The first major difference I've found is that bathrooms are different here. Taps are usually a knob or dial that you twist to adjust temperature and tilt to adjust flow. It's just little tiny things like that that are making me think "I am so not at home." Also, toilets are shaped pretty dang differently. Not majorly differently, it's just that they have a wider, flatter bowl and have a lot more water in them. Australian toilets are deep and have about three inches of water in the bottom. American toilets are more like an actual bowl and have about seven or eight inches in, and it fills to the point that you have to watch out for splashback. This is a real honest problem.
Fast food is amazing. Not good amazing, just plentiful amazing. And in some cases, horrifically bad amazing. A few major chains that I've had completely confuse me as to why they haven't made it to Australia; Taco Bell is my biggest confusion. It's not great or anything but it's exactly what you want out of fast food mexican and drunks want fast food mexican. There is a type of cheese that is used on a lot of things, which is a fake nacho cheese. It's pretty much a yellow goo which I think is half powdered Doritos and half wood glue that really gets into so much stuff it's amazing.
On the food front still, it's only a burger here if it actually has ground beef, a steak or chicken in it. I've gotten used to the fact that biscuits are a more buttery slightly thicker english muffin, I've come to terms with the fact that jelly isn't a wobbly mass of sugar with an Aeroplane on the box and I still can't get my head around when someone says "sandwich" and hands me a bun or a burger. Mindboggling, I tell you. And I'm already homesick for margerine. Everybody uses mayonnaise instead.
Biscuits are actually pretty good, and I think I'm going to find a way to get them in Australia, along with grits. I'm not entirely sure what a biscuit is; it tastes sort of like a buttery english muffin, only it's heavier and the outside of it isn't powdery and toastable, it's more like a bun. They're quite odd but go very very well with bacon, egg and cheese. Or with sausage and gravy. Or with most things. Grits are fantastic, they're a form of cornmeal porridge that you usually have savoury, instead of sweet. It's common to have it with tomato sauce, bacon, salt and pepper, cheese, butter or even horseradish or worcestershire sauce. They're supposedly an aquired taste but heck, I liked it pretty much straight away.
I went to a Karaoke bar. That was a mistake. They had Down Under by Men At Work in the songlist and I didn't get to choose my first song. I'm a sort of a gimmick, you see.
Conversations with most people here usually go quite well until I say a word like "tomato" or "awesome" or "strawberry" or something that I apparently pronounce so hilariously, at which point all communication stops and it becomes a game of trying to teach whoever I'm talking to how to say those words in an Australian accent. A lot of people tend to put on a really prim and proper British accent when trying to sound like me. It's weird and odd, all at once.
It's probably just that I haven't really been to that many major cities yet either, but everything feels more spread out. In Australia, there's districts of activity and long expanses of just suburban areas and not much more. Here, it seems like there's something to do around every corner, but that could just be my stinky foreigner eyes staring at everything strangely and thinking it's all new and exciting.
I'm going to go out to a coffee shop in a little while and have something fiendishly complex and delicious, then go... well, I don't even know where, but I'm sure it'll be somewhere.
Oh, by the way, the baseball game? Maddie and I walked through the gates and straight away got asked if we wanted to take part in a on-field game, so in between the third and fourth (or fourth and fifth) innings we went down to the batting cages, got dressed up like giant buns and raced another team to create a burger out of ourselves. It was fun!
The first major difference I've found is that bathrooms are different here. Taps are usually a knob or dial that you twist to adjust temperature and tilt to adjust flow. It's just little tiny things like that that are making me think "I am so not at home." Also, toilets are shaped pretty dang differently. Not majorly differently, it's just that they have a wider, flatter bowl and have a lot more water in them. Australian toilets are deep and have about three inches of water in the bottom. American toilets are more like an actual bowl and have about seven or eight inches in, and it fills to the point that you have to watch out for splashback. This is a real honest problem.
Fast food is amazing. Not good amazing, just plentiful amazing. And in some cases, horrifically bad amazing. A few major chains that I've had completely confuse me as to why they haven't made it to Australia; Taco Bell is my biggest confusion. It's not great or anything but it's exactly what you want out of fast food mexican and drunks want fast food mexican. There is a type of cheese that is used on a lot of things, which is a fake nacho cheese. It's pretty much a yellow goo which I think is half powdered Doritos and half wood glue that really gets into so much stuff it's amazing.
On the food front still, it's only a burger here if it actually has ground beef, a steak or chicken in it. I've gotten used to the fact that biscuits are a more buttery slightly thicker english muffin, I've come to terms with the fact that jelly isn't a wobbly mass of sugar with an Aeroplane on the box and I still can't get my head around when someone says "sandwich" and hands me a bun or a burger. Mindboggling, I tell you. And I'm already homesick for margerine. Everybody uses mayonnaise instead.
Biscuits are actually pretty good, and I think I'm going to find a way to get them in Australia, along with grits. I'm not entirely sure what a biscuit is; it tastes sort of like a buttery english muffin, only it's heavier and the outside of it isn't powdery and toastable, it's more like a bun. They're quite odd but go very very well with bacon, egg and cheese. Or with sausage and gravy. Or with most things. Grits are fantastic, they're a form of cornmeal porridge that you usually have savoury, instead of sweet. It's common to have it with tomato sauce, bacon, salt and pepper, cheese, butter or even horseradish or worcestershire sauce. They're supposedly an aquired taste but heck, I liked it pretty much straight away.
I went to a Karaoke bar. That was a mistake. They had Down Under by Men At Work in the songlist and I didn't get to choose my first song. I'm a sort of a gimmick, you see.
Conversations with most people here usually go quite well until I say a word like "tomato" or "awesome" or "strawberry" or something that I apparently pronounce so hilariously, at which point all communication stops and it becomes a game of trying to teach whoever I'm talking to how to say those words in an Australian accent. A lot of people tend to put on a really prim and proper British accent when trying to sound like me. It's weird and odd, all at once.
It's probably just that I haven't really been to that many major cities yet either, but everything feels more spread out. In Australia, there's districts of activity and long expanses of just suburban areas and not much more. Here, it seems like there's something to do around every corner, but that could just be my stinky foreigner eyes staring at everything strangely and thinking it's all new and exciting.
I'm going to go out to a coffee shop in a little while and have something fiendishly complex and delicious, then go... well, I don't even know where, but I'm sure it'll be somewhere.
Oh, by the way, the baseball game? Maddie and I walked through the gates and straight away got asked if we wanted to take part in a on-field game, so in between the third and fourth (or fourth and fifth) innings we went down to the batting cages, got dressed up like giant buns and raced another team to create a burger out of ourselves. It was fun!
Friday, August 10
TAKE. ME OUT. TO THE BAAAAALLLLL GAAAAAAME
Another fairly short update but just enough to let you all know I do still live, breathe and exist.
North Carolina is unbelievably beautiful. There's forests everywhere and while it's hot, it's gorgeous. Gorgeous. The lakes are incredible and I wish they didn't have big "NO SWIMMING" signs up everywhere but y'know, snapper turtles could attack my bits. I like my bits un-attacked by turtles.
I've been getting American culture down lately. Going to the mall (and buying a hat at Hot Topic) and driving around a lot singing out loudly and getting beer from the supermarket and such. I'm just about to head out actually to go to a Baseball game on Thirsty Thursdays where the beers are a dollar!
So really I should only hafta spend like thirty bucks to get a little buzz going on!
That's an overstatement but it's still pretty weak here. Not bad, but weak. I'm really excited to be going to my first real American past-time, and I'm sure I'll spend it sweating and going "ewwwww this beer has gotten warm" but y'know, that's basically what Aussie sporting events are like. I'd assume.
I'm gunna go do things now. I really really promise I will write a mondo update sometime when I can be bothered getting Maddie's laptop fixed up to take photos from my phone and stick them on the internet. I really can't at the moment though but I will!
Ciaociaociaociaociaociaociao ciao
North Carolina is unbelievably beautiful. There's forests everywhere and while it's hot, it's gorgeous. Gorgeous. The lakes are incredible and I wish they didn't have big "NO SWIMMING" signs up everywhere but y'know, snapper turtles could attack my bits. I like my bits un-attacked by turtles.
I've been getting American culture down lately. Going to the mall (and buying a hat at Hot Topic) and driving around a lot singing out loudly and getting beer from the supermarket and such. I'm just about to head out actually to go to a Baseball game on Thirsty Thursdays where the beers are a dollar!
So really I should only hafta spend like thirty bucks to get a little buzz going on!
That's an overstatement but it's still pretty weak here. Not bad, but weak. I'm really excited to be going to my first real American past-time, and I'm sure I'll spend it sweating and going "ewwwww this beer has gotten warm" but y'know, that's basically what Aussie sporting events are like. I'd assume.
I'm gunna go do things now. I really really promise I will write a mondo update sometime when I can be bothered getting Maddie's laptop fixed up to take photos from my phone and stick them on the internet. I really can't at the moment though but I will!
Ciaociaociaociaociaociaociao ciao
Monday, August 6
This is a totally tiny update
American Dominos pizza is honestly as good as Tomato Brothers pizza, aka gourmet pizza in Australia. And it's apparently BAD pizza here. I eagerly await having good pizza.
Sunday, August 5
A-MER-ICA
Alriiiight, I haven't contacted a single soul since I came here. Mostly due to Maddie's laptop being in her car, and her car being mysteriously moved by her friend, thereby removing my access to internet. And it's taken a little bit of time to get my phone up and running; not due to any external difficulties, it's just that spending $40 to get a mobile and 120 minutes of international call time means that you've gotta wait a couple days to get it activated.
If I spoke to any of you about how worried I was at getting through customs, then I was an idiot. Honestly, the guy barely even looked at me, I forgot I had food in my bag and I sent my backpack through a metal scanner with a distinctively shiv-like pen in it and nobody said anything. Hell, when they asked if there was anything to declare, I remembered I had vegemite but the girl didn't even care what that was. Well, she was curious when I said vegemite but as soon as I started talking about it, she just glazed over then said "Whatever, just go through." Funny thing really, I thought it was banned due to riboflavin or whatever. The Whalley ability to make people's eyes glaze over comes in handy sometimes.
First day was really just showing up at DC, having Maddie sweep me off my feet, almost getting lost on the way back to the hotel then heading up to the room. I stayed up as late as I possibly could - five PM - then I crashed. So did Maddie. We both woke up at about midnight, then watched a DVD, then crashed again until about 9am, and sleep has been totally regular since then.
The plane was half great, due to the massive selection of blockbuster movies to watch for free on the back of the chair in front of me, and half terrible, what with the 50 year old Korean man who was acting like a tiny kid and moving the chair back and forth like craaaaaaazy and the fact that they were mostly bad movies. Except for 300 and Meet The Robinsons, which were both great.
I had an American burger. It was greasy and awesome and I totally tipped a dude and the n he said my jeans were cool and they totally were. We took the fries up to the hotel room. We woke up with this giant-ass bag of greasy as hell fries stinking the room up. It kicked ass.
Today, the four of us went to the Smithsonian and we checked out the museum of modern art, which is always fun to do with friends purely for the bullshitting up reasons and motives behind artworks, before heading off the the planes and space museum that had a totally better and more official sounding name, but I can't remember it so it will forevermore be the planes and space museum. It was neat, I saw things that had actually BEEN ON the MOON. Thennnnnnn we went through a bit of another museum and checked out all these things about Americans in history that mean jack diddly to me but the others seemed to like it. I saw a couple famous trumpets though and totally took mobile phone pictures of them. Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet had a weird bend in it. Who knew!
We then went to a DIFFERENT museum (and I took a cell phone picture of the boner statue and of this really pretty art gallery and a couple other places) and saw some stuffed Australian animals and I told everyone how much I'd beat them up. Don't tell the Americans that I totally can't actually beat them up. It'd break my heart.
I need to go do other things now like wash this weird black stain that the metro line put on my hand, and eat a baby ruth chocolate bar, and drink some black cherry rum, and go swim in the hotel pool beause it's like 90 degrees outside. That's really just about 32, so it's not too bad, but it's pretty dang humid here in Washington, D.C.
My phone seems to have just set itself up to be able to do local calls, so I just called Maddie and found out my phone number - here it is including all the numbers you'd need to dial from an Australian phone to get in contact with it. Just write this down and call it to get me, but you totally won't be able to for two more days. It takes two days for international contacting to start up. Don't call me until I call one of you sort of thing.
Anyway; ze number: 0018-1919-946-2565
I asked Maddie how to say "I love you all" in Spanish but she's a girl and girls are pretty dumb. I love you all! Ciao!
If I spoke to any of you about how worried I was at getting through customs, then I was an idiot. Honestly, the guy barely even looked at me, I forgot I had food in my bag and I sent my backpack through a metal scanner with a distinctively shiv-like pen in it and nobody said anything. Hell, when they asked if there was anything to declare, I remembered I had vegemite but the girl didn't even care what that was. Well, she was curious when I said vegemite but as soon as I started talking about it, she just glazed over then said "Whatever, just go through." Funny thing really, I thought it was banned due to riboflavin or whatever. The Whalley ability to make people's eyes glaze over comes in handy sometimes.
First day was really just showing up at DC, having Maddie sweep me off my feet, almost getting lost on the way back to the hotel then heading up to the room. I stayed up as late as I possibly could - five PM - then I crashed. So did Maddie. We both woke up at about midnight, then watched a DVD, then crashed again until about 9am, and sleep has been totally regular since then.
The plane was half great, due to the massive selection of blockbuster movies to watch for free on the back of the chair in front of me, and half terrible, what with the 50 year old Korean man who was acting like a tiny kid and moving the chair back and forth like craaaaaaazy and the fact that they were mostly bad movies. Except for 300 and Meet The Robinsons, which were both great.
I had an American burger. It was greasy and awesome and I totally tipped a dude and the n he said my jeans were cool and they totally were. We took the fries up to the hotel room. We woke up with this giant-ass bag of greasy as hell fries stinking the room up. It kicked ass.
Today, the four of us went to the Smithsonian and we checked out the museum of modern art, which is always fun to do with friends purely for the bullshitting up reasons and motives behind artworks, before heading off the the planes and space museum that had a totally better and more official sounding name, but I can't remember it so it will forevermore be the planes and space museum. It was neat, I saw things that had actually BEEN ON the MOON. Thennnnnnn we went through a bit of another museum and checked out all these things about Americans in history that mean jack diddly to me but the others seemed to like it. I saw a couple famous trumpets though and totally took mobile phone pictures of them. Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet had a weird bend in it. Who knew!
We then went to a DIFFERENT museum (and I took a cell phone picture of the boner statue and of this really pretty art gallery and a couple other places) and saw some stuffed Australian animals and I told everyone how much I'd beat them up. Don't tell the Americans that I totally can't actually beat them up. It'd break my heart.
I need to go do other things now like wash this weird black stain that the metro line put on my hand, and eat a baby ruth chocolate bar, and drink some black cherry rum, and go swim in the hotel pool beause it's like 90 degrees outside. That's really just about 32, so it's not too bad, but it's pretty dang humid here in Washington, D.C.
My phone seems to have just set itself up to be able to do local calls, so I just called Maddie and found out my phone number - here it is including all the numbers you'd need to dial from an Australian phone to get in contact with it. Just write this down and call it to get me, but you totally won't be able to for two more days. It takes two days for international contacting to start up. Don't call me until I call one of you sort of thing.
Anyway; ze number: 0018-1919-946-2565
I asked Maddie how to say "I love you all" in Spanish but she's a girl and girls are pretty dumb. I love you all! Ciao!
Thursday, August 2
Korea loves honey.
Wow. I'll be able to update this more once I'm actually IN the USA and can bug Maddie until she lets me set up my phone with her computer so I can upload all the photos (and possibly the amazingly odd video) I took in Korea. But Korea was a damn adventure, and I'll never look at people who can't speak English in Australia in the same way again.
Going through Customs here was really, really, really easy once I found the card in English saying what to fill in where. Finding the card was a little hard, because I had to dig through a pile of Russian ones, but I found it. (Don't tell anyone that I totally missed the box that said [ENGLISH] at the top until after I'd found a misplaced English card)
So I went to the hotel information desk and gave them my details, the girl who I talked to told me to go and wait over in a seating area for fifteen minutes. I went and sat there for 20, then looked over and she had disappeared. As she was the only one at the hotel desk who knew English and there was no people from my flight staying in the hotel I was, I triple checked the stuff I wrote down. "Go to Level 3, exit door 8, the bus goes there." Level 1 wasn't going to help me OR SO I THOUGHT.
Went up to level 3, walked to the exit and four buses came, the fourth driver understood just enough English to say "No go port 1, hotel desk" when I told him where I wanted to be. I went back inside and heard an announcement in Korean just finish, then it changed to English and said "Could the red tracksuit boy with the girl's haircut come to the hotel information desk."
Who else but Whalley could that be!
I made my way down there and the girl I'd spoken to came over to me and apologised for taking so long, I said I panicked and got lost (entirely the truth) and she introduced me to a man who said "English!" and waved for me to follow, then took off on a run. What could I do but follow?
The hotel sent a limousine and he was the driver, who I found out didn't speak English at all. Two other passengers were in the car, and that made things fun. See, one of them spoke Korean and a bit of Japanese and the other was a Japanese girl who spoke English better than I did but from her own admission, could only say about 10% of things in Korean. So the driver asked the first passenger who asked the second who asked me, "are you from England?" I told her no, Australia, and that got relayed back to the driver who spoke all the Australian he knew. "Ah, Australia! Sydney! O-per-ah-house-air-rock?" I just nodded and smiled, and he seemed happy with himself. I knew the driver and the Korean passenger were talking about me, as they'd frequently say "Australian" and laugh, but so what, people talk about me all the time. I'm great. The Japanese girl and me chatted on our way to the hotel.
Now that I'm back at the airport I can see I wrote it down wrong, but the hotel didn't have my booking number, so I had to pay out the nose. 90,000 korean... things! I tell you, it was a good thing that equalled about US$70 or I woulda been freaking out.
The hotel room had a vending machine for food, drink, beer, chocolate, stockings and honey condoms. I didn't get any honey condoms although I'm regretting it now. Korea is obsessed with honey, I have to say. Snacks on the plane? Honey related or coated. Beer? I know the taste of honey beer quite well thank you very much. Chocolate? Think Mars bars with honey instead of caramel. Moisturiser and shampoo? You best believe we talkin' honey, y'all.
The bathroom was great. I forgot what it's like to be able to have a shower without water restriction woes, and the entire bathroom is your shower. The wall unit blasted water in any direction I wanted it aimed, and the drain was directly in the center of the room. Needless to say, I spent a little bit of time singing into the showerhead in front of the full length mirror in the shower. I am so great.
I found a channel on TV that was playing Bruce Willis things back to back, so I watched that and hung out in the hotel room - we were too far away from anywhere to go out, and I didn't really want to go down the weird staircase in the middle of the hotel parking lot that was neon lit; from the looks of it, it was one of those bars where all the girls wear no shirts and they fondle you while you drink. I wasn't in the mood for being fondled while I drink.
Oh god, Korea is beautiful though. The whole drive from the airport to the hotel, I was just noticing all the hills and forests and greenery and such, and it was amaaaaaaazing. I've never seen forests so dense and green and vibrant. I couldn't get a photo on the way but I tried to take one out my hotel window; my phone says it's pretty neat but that may not be the case in the end.
In the morning, I was the only one who was going to be taking the bus so the bus driver said fuck it and stuck me in the limo, driving me back to the airport. Conversation was really really limited, what with his knowledge of English already having being outlined and the total amount of Korean I can speak being "Kim Jong Il" and "Aachi and Ssipak" - the second being an animated movie about a woman whose butt sensor makes it seem like she poos 100x as much as she does so when she goes to the toilet she is rewarded with 100x the normal amount of highly addictive lollipops, so a green troll is out to get her with his smurf henchmen only a government android and two thugs don't want that to happen, also the android is a former porn director. I opted for silence.
And basically, here we are. I considered writing about how I got lost coming into the airport, but I really didn't. I just walked forwards until I almost bumped into a sign saying "INTERNATIONAL BOARDING ->" and decided to walk -> until I found where I had to go through. Customs were even easier this time around as my main bag is being shot straight to Washington, so now all I need to do is continue my trend of not breaking the law and I should be set.
Oh and Mum, the window seat I got? Nobody was sitting in between my window seat and the aisle. How radical.
Going through Customs here was really, really, really easy once I found the card in English saying what to fill in where. Finding the card was a little hard, because I had to dig through a pile of Russian ones, but I found it. (Don't tell anyone that I totally missed the box that said [ENGLISH] at the top until after I'd found a misplaced English card)
So I went to the hotel information desk and gave them my details, the girl who I talked to told me to go and wait over in a seating area for fifteen minutes. I went and sat there for 20, then looked over and she had disappeared. As she was the only one at the hotel desk who knew English and there was no people from my flight staying in the hotel I was, I triple checked the stuff I wrote down. "Go to Level 3, exit door 8, the bus goes there." Level 1 wasn't going to help me OR SO I THOUGHT.
Went up to level 3, walked to the exit and four buses came, the fourth driver understood just enough English to say "No go port 1, hotel desk" when I told him where I wanted to be. I went back inside and heard an announcement in Korean just finish, then it changed to English and said "Could the red tracksuit boy with the girl's haircut come to the hotel information desk."
Who else but Whalley could that be!
I made my way down there and the girl I'd spoken to came over to me and apologised for taking so long, I said I panicked and got lost (entirely the truth) and she introduced me to a man who said "English!" and waved for me to follow, then took off on a run. What could I do but follow?
The hotel sent a limousine and he was the driver, who I found out didn't speak English at all. Two other passengers were in the car, and that made things fun. See, one of them spoke Korean and a bit of Japanese and the other was a Japanese girl who spoke English better than I did but from her own admission, could only say about 10% of things in Korean. So the driver asked the first passenger who asked the second who asked me, "are you from England?" I told her no, Australia, and that got relayed back to the driver who spoke all the Australian he knew. "Ah, Australia! Sydney! O-per-ah-house-air-rock?" I just nodded and smiled, and he seemed happy with himself. I knew the driver and the Korean passenger were talking about me, as they'd frequently say "Australian" and laugh, but so what, people talk about me all the time. I'm great. The Japanese girl and me chatted on our way to the hotel.
Now that I'm back at the airport I can see I wrote it down wrong, but the hotel didn't have my booking number, so I had to pay out the nose. 90,000 korean... things! I tell you, it was a good thing that equalled about US$70 or I woulda been freaking out.
The hotel room had a vending machine for food, drink, beer, chocolate, stockings and honey condoms. I didn't get any honey condoms although I'm regretting it now. Korea is obsessed with honey, I have to say. Snacks on the plane? Honey related or coated. Beer? I know the taste of honey beer quite well thank you very much. Chocolate? Think Mars bars with honey instead of caramel. Moisturiser and shampoo? You best believe we talkin' honey, y'all.
The bathroom was great. I forgot what it's like to be able to have a shower without water restriction woes, and the entire bathroom is your shower. The wall unit blasted water in any direction I wanted it aimed, and the drain was directly in the center of the room. Needless to say, I spent a little bit of time singing into the showerhead in front of the full length mirror in the shower. I am so great.
I found a channel on TV that was playing Bruce Willis things back to back, so I watched that and hung out in the hotel room - we were too far away from anywhere to go out, and I didn't really want to go down the weird staircase in the middle of the hotel parking lot that was neon lit; from the looks of it, it was one of those bars where all the girls wear no shirts and they fondle you while you drink. I wasn't in the mood for being fondled while I drink.
Oh god, Korea is beautiful though. The whole drive from the airport to the hotel, I was just noticing all the hills and forests and greenery and such, and it was amaaaaaaazing. I've never seen forests so dense and green and vibrant. I couldn't get a photo on the way but I tried to take one out my hotel window; my phone says it's pretty neat but that may not be the case in the end.
In the morning, I was the only one who was going to be taking the bus so the bus driver said fuck it and stuck me in the limo, driving me back to the airport. Conversation was really really limited, what with his knowledge of English already having being outlined and the total amount of Korean I can speak being "Kim Jong Il" and "Aachi and Ssipak" - the second being an animated movie about a woman whose butt sensor makes it seem like she poos 100x as much as she does so when she goes to the toilet she is rewarded with 100x the normal amount of highly addictive lollipops, so a green troll is out to get her with his smurf henchmen only a government android and two thugs don't want that to happen, also the android is a former porn director. I opted for silence.
And basically, here we are. I considered writing about how I got lost coming into the airport, but I really didn't. I just walked forwards until I almost bumped into a sign saying "INTERNATIONAL BOARDING ->" and decided to walk -> until I found where I had to go through. Customs were even easier this time around as my main bag is being shot straight to Washington, so now all I need to do is continue my trend of not breaking the law and I should be set.
Oh and Mum, the window seat I got? Nobody was sitting in between my window seat and the aisle. How radical.
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